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Obama: Iraqi forces reclaim dam

By KAREN DEYOUNG, LIZ SLY and LOVEDAY MORRISWashington Post

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Monday that Iraqi and Kurdish forces, aided by waves of U.S. airstrikes, had recaptured the country’s largest dam, hailing the development as “important progress” against from Islamic State fighters.

While he said other U.S. goals had also been met in Iraq, including stopping a militant surge toward the Kurdish capital of Irbil, Obama declined to set a time frame to limit U.S. military action in the country.

“A lot of it depends on how effectively the Iraqi government comes together,” Obama said.

The president said his primary goal in Iraq is to “make sure we have a viable partner” and a “government formation process that is credible, legitimate and can appeal to Sunnis” and other Iraqi minorities. “We’ve made significant progress on that front, but we’re not there yet,” Obama said.

Iraq’s new prime minister-designate, Haider al-Abadi, has said he will form a new government within the next two weeks. “When we see a credible Iraqi government,” Obama said in remarks in the White House press briefing room, “we are then in a position to engage in planning” for the future.

Asked whether he was concerned about U.S.”mission creep,” Obama said that “if we have effective partners on the ground, mission creep is much less likely.” When U.S. officials “start deciding that we’re the ones that have to do it all ourselves, because of the excellence of our military, that can work for a time, we learned that in Iraq. But it’s not sustainable, it’s not lasting.”

In Iraq, fighting continued on the western bank of the lake at the head of the Mosul Dam on Monday, and government troops were unable to enter the facility because it was booby-trapped by the retreating militants, officials said.

But Iraqi and Kurdish officials claimed that Islamic State fighters were on the run after the offensive launched by Iraqi special forces and Kurdish pesh merga fighters backed by U.S. air support Sunday.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said the airstrikes continued Monday, with a mix of fighter jets, bombers and drones successfully conducting 15 strikes against Islamic State targets near the Mosul Dam. It said the airstrikes damaged or destroyed nine fighting positions, a checkpoint, six armed vehicles, a light armored vehicle, a vehicle-mounted antiaircraft gun and an “emplacement belt” for improvised explosive devices, known as IEDs.

“All aircraft exited the strike areas safely,” the Central Command said in a statement. It said U.S. forces have carried out a total of 68 airstrikes in Iraq since Aug. 8, of which 35 have been in support of Iraqi forces near the Mosul Dam.

Lt. Gen. Qassim Atta, an Iraqi army spokesman, told journalists in Baghdad that the joint operation “fully liberated the dam” and that the troops “hoisted the Iraqi flag over it.”

Brig. Gen. Abdulwahab al-Saidi, an Iraqi special forces commander, said: “The dam is completely under our control. Our soldiers are now relaxing swimming in the lake.”

The claims came a day after Iraqi and Kurdish commanders said they had made unexpectedly swift progress after the operation was launched. They said their forces sliced through a series of villages and reached the dam after a wave of U.S. attacks in which fighter jets, drones and bombers pummeled the extremists’ positions.

It was the biggest offensive since the latest U.S. intervention in Iraq was announced 10 days ago, and it signaled an expansion of what was originally defined as a narrowly focused mission to protect American personnel in Iraq and help fleeing Yazidi villagers trapped on a mountain.

In a letter released Sunday notifying Congress of the action, Obama said the militants’ control of the dam posed a threat to the U.S. Embassy 200 miles away in Baghdad, which could be inundated if the dam were breached. Obama also had signaled in a statement last week that protecting “critical infrastructure” would be part of what officials have described as a limited military intervention. This was, however, the first time Iraqi, Kurdish and U.S. forces had come together to launch a major ground assault.

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